Microeconomic Flexibility in Latin America

Ricardo Caballero (), Eduardo Engel and Alejandro Micco ()

Working Papers from Economic Growth Center, Yale University

Abstract: We characterize the degree of microeconomic inflexibility in several Latin American economies and find that Brazil, Chile and Colombia are more flexible than Mexico and Venezuela. The difference in flexibility among these economies is mainly explained by the behavior of large establishments, which adjust more promptly in the more flexible economies, especially when accumulated shocks are substantial. We also study the path of flexibility in Chile and show that it declined in the aftermath of the Asian crisis. This decline can account for a substantial fraction of the large decline in TFP-growth in Chile since 1997 (from 3.1 percent per year for the preceding decade, to about 0.3 percent after that). Moreover, if it were to persist, it could permanently shave off almost half of a percent from Chile's structural rate of growth.

Keywords: Microeconomic rigidities; creative-destruction; job flows; restructuring and reallocation; productivity growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E2 J2 J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2004-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lam and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.yale.edu/growth_pdf/cdp884.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Microeconomic Flexibility in Latin America (2005)
Journal Article: Microeconomic Flexibility in Latin America (2004)
Working Paper: Microeconomic Flexibility in Latin America (2004)
Working Paper: Microeconomic Flexibility in Latin America (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:egc:wpaper:884

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Economic Growth Center, Yale University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benjamin King ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).